2/25/14

BATMAN #39 — Jill Thompson supplies a truly ominous Harley Quinn variant this month. Okay, I’m sorry, but reading the phrase “AND THE DOCTOR WHO” in the fourth panel of the second page triggered an idea for the best mash-up ever, the Dark Knight as the ultimate Companion for The Doctor. I mean, think about it. In comic form, it would be swell, but what if they could get an anthology mini-series of that thing on the picture show tube? Any living Doctor or Batman. Kilmer & Tennant. Keaton & Eccleston. It almost doesn’t even matter what any other aspect of the conflict or show is, just putting those people together in that context would be fucking thunder. So, I spent like twenty minutes just staring off into space before finishing that fourth panel. So, why should this write-up be any different? But, well then! I love Batman’s resolution to the Court of Owls guy launching off on a monologue/tirade. And but doesn’t that Talon he meets on the next page just look like the bad guy out of BATTLING BOY. Definitely some Pope flavor on that business, there. Batman’s retort to his death sentence struck me kind of funny. “Dude, we’re all going to die. I know that. But not today.” (ß not an actual quote, but still). I love the anecdote about teenage Dick Grayson joking about it not being a weekend until his mentor’s heart stopped at least twice. Terrific bit. And I’m sorry to sound like an old guy, but I really hate the retcon that compresses the whole 75-year timeline and suddenly Bruce was thirteen when he fell down the cave instead of having already been an orphan for five years. Thas not cool, man. The attempted Mooresque juxtaposition of Bruce’s caption to Julia that it keeps getting worse opposite Joker saying it keeps getting better and better is forced and quite a dip from what I expect from Snyder on this book. As opposed to Joker’s wordplay with lumber/lumbar and chords/cord. Even though that seems more Eddie Nygma’s purview. This is a terrific set-up, though, all hands on deck vs the Joker with the big conclusion looming. Linguistic quibbles notwithstanding, this is another beautifully staged issue of a run by creators who are still finding a way to escalate the stakes and quality three and a half years in. Very impressive.

And wow, that backup is certainly one way to pay off a long-simmering sub-plot. Very EC Comics. Quality work.

SECRET ORIGINS #10 — That . . . did not clear up a great deal where Barbara Gordon is concerned. Which I’m all right with. I wasn’t looking for all the answers just doled out. The answer is in that deal about the last recorded memory being the second brain scan. I suspect that the whole “Oracle is back” deal is just a red herring and all we’re dealing with is a sentient algorithm that Barbara wrote that now thinks it actually is its creator and is going to be a really terrific nemesis just any minute now. Solid art from Irene Koh just even barely hanging with the greatness we’ve come to expect from Stewart doing layouts for Tarr.

So, of course I bought this one just for the Batgirl story, but the Jurgens/Chen Firestorm was solid, even though I’ve never really cared that much about the character and just got hammered with some strong work featuring him over on that new THE FLASH show. I have been wondering about old Sean Chen; it’s been years now since he showed up to help Hickman knock that DARK REIGN mini out of the park at the start of his FF run. Same deal with Christy Marx and Stjepan Seijic on that Poison Ivy origin. Never even heard of those two, but they did a good job. I definitely flinched at the $4.99 cover price but feel all right about the purchase, even though it will definitely take a name creator I care about to bring me back. Solid work, SECRET ORIGINS.

GOTHAM ACADEMY #5 — Oh wow, I absolutely did not get that that loveable blue monster who showed up at the end of last issue was Croc. Killer no more! What a sweet Gotham Academy filter we have here. And but that’s a pretty intriguing first-page fact about Olive’s mom being in Arkham. Though it certainly is about to time to start dropping this sort of thing. You’ve got to love Maps wrecking it for the final beat on that first page. And we get Maps’s real name a few pages later. Revelations abound. And her happy little face when Olive asks Kyle to the dance! This book really knocks out all the beats one by one. Even before mentioning the basilisk. That’s almost like bringing up a patronus, man. And but what a hell of a last page, man. This book is really up and firing on all cylinders now.

BATMAN ETERNAL #47 — More terrific art, this time from Juan Ferreyra. That first double-page spread is a hell of a layout. On the dialogue front, I don’t care what the context is, Alfred saying, “Yes. I heard as much before I fell asleep,” just scans wrong. I do dig that cross-section show of whatever Batplane he’s got up in the air there on Page 7, panel 4. It’s cool to see the sidekick montage, but I question the usage of the old amusement park for Batgirl. I mean, how many times since September 2011 have we brought up THE KILLING JOKE on-panel? More than since the turn of the century at least, right? Let’s move on. And Hush has some new ally who’s still off-panel and let him back out again. I’m certainly sorry that happened. It is about time to put this one to bed.

FUTURES END #43 — Andy McDonald? Seems like he’s been all right on interiors a time or two before now. His style in this opening scene skews a bit too indie for my tastes to depict a big Superman-fighting-giant-Brainiac-in-New-York situation. And New York?!? That’s just confusing. Shouldn’t the FF or Avengers be all over that? I had to chuckle at Azzarello’s trademark wordplay on that first page with Tim and Plastique, the “ass--” “hol’ up” thing. That is the first time I’ve seen in this one so far that some straight 100-BULLETS-type dialogue showed up. The Lois/Superman interaction is pretty damn boilerplate, particularly given what should be the collective firepower of this writing crew. And then, wow, we’re going to waste half a page with more Dick (Grayson) jokes? That is some pretty weak shit. I will say that old Andy McDonald did a good job with that one page where Terry and Plastique kiss. Other than that, man, this was a pretty serious dip all around, exactly what you don’t want to see as we ramp up into the home stretch.

CHEW #46—Well, if that isn’t the most precious little gummy D-Bag on the cover, then I don’t know what my name is. Layman/Guillory are kind enough to give us at least four more pages of greatness with that opening scene before reality has to set in. Which I understand is a pretty relative term where this book is concerned, but you take my meaning. This issue manages to tell another entertaining done-in-one case and still push everything forward with that huge moment at the end that then just totally doesn’t happen. Which just makes a guy heartsick. Layman is such a bastard. He’s laughing at all of us. He wants to drink our tears.

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #8 — This one holds up the momentum from last month and ups the ante by having our girl trip balls for most of the issue, which looked like a pretty solid representation to me. Better than I can convey, at any rate! Gillen’s still doing all right with it, but it’s McKelvie/Wilson who are carrying this thing on their shoulder, particularly the acid portion of the program, naturally. I tell you what, though, that PHONOGRAM on the inside back cover straight up gave me goosebumps. Hopefully, August will roll around soonish so that I can just give this book a fair shake on its own merits and quit bitching that it’s keeping McKelvie from drawing the book that God put him on the Earth to draw.

ODY-C #3 — The captions and art blend together in this one more effectively than what’s gone before. Not that it needed help, but the language here flows together with the images in a more seamless manner. Was Fraction using second person before now? That decision recalls seventies Goodwin and O’Neil Batman comics as much as Homer and really just works. This issue also does a little bit better job of wedding science fiction to Greek myth. That is one fearsome Cyclops of Kylos. I was already hoping this would be the call, but I’m pleased that Fraction decided not to fully resolve this in a single issue. I mean, the Cyclops just needs more time on-panel, right? Pretty clever inversion of the old “no man” gag, too. The deal with this issue is that they’re already really hitting their groove and settling in, here. You can’t see all the heavy lifting going on, which wasn’t necessarily the case when we were getting blasted in the face with all that insanity of the first two issues. Christian Ward’s art, those colors, you can’t really call them understated by they’re a little bit dialed down this time? Not so bombastic as what we’ve seen. This issue, at least. It’s nice to see them find their stride and start to pace it out a little bit, here. It’s going to be a pretty long trip, I betcha.

SAVAGE SWORD OF CRIMINAL — I’m such a zombie for everything that Brubaker/Phillips put out that it took me a couple of pages to get into the jailhouse section of this issue before realizing, Oh fuck, this is CRIMINAL, not INCOGNITO or FATALE or THE FADE OUT or whatever the hell else they made up to do last week, this is the original shit, man. I didn’t read SLEEPER when it was coming out, so this was my introduction to all things Brubaker/Phillips. And this one is still just the absolute best, man. This is a tantalizing glimpse into the life of Teeg Lawless, who did a short stretch of time in ’76, managing not to get shanked while also bringing us along on the sequential adventures of a Conan analogue. You can tell that everybody involved is just having a ball; the creators’ passion for the project is readily apparent. Nothing monumental happens, this one is just another tale of someone trying to get by the best he can with all of his wits deployed to help him through. The Phillips painted cover a la Frazetta on the oversized edition is the only version of this that you need in your life. Good fun, all around. Hope we don’t have to wait this many years again before the next installment of this excellent series.

LOW #6 — Jesus, Remender! You just don’t care, do you? Fella is making a hard charge for that hill that Whedon and Martin have claimed and that Kirkman keeps trying for every few years. The result, though, is genuinely shocking material. I certainly didn’t see that one coming. Greg Tocchini continues to turn in absolute painted glory. Glad I hung with this one for the first arc and will certainly be picking it back up in June when the next one gets going.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #002 — I cared a liiiiiittle bit more about this one? I don’t know. I’m going to hang with it for a little while longer, but I don’t care about too much of the ensemble, really for none of the new additions (why the fuck does everyone keep trying to make Brother Voodoo a thing? If it isn’t Fred Hembeck doing it, let’s leave the Drumm brothers back in the seventies where they belong). And it’s not like I’m not picking up enough Marvels. This one’s right on the line for me. 

NEW AVENGERS #030 — Um. This one is kind of a downer. I used to rag on Bendis as much as anybody when he would just drop an issue of straight talking-head exposition, but Hickman substantially mitigates that tactic here by having good old Hank Pym narrate the death of All the Fucking Celestials with all the Kirby-level insanity that such a thing implies, both artistically and conceptually. I wasn’t that onboard with Dalibor Talajic initially. He comes across as a bit rougher and flatter than even Kev Walker, who I did not find to be a suitable alternate to Deodato’s insane and almost painterly photo-realism. But dude opens up the can of crackle when it counts, man. Dear Lord. This issue is basically nothing but exposition set-up for all the crazy shit Hickman is about to ramp it all up to yet again in a couple of months, and yet by the end, when Hank says, “I went mad. Lost in the fireworks of universal genocide,” we’re all like, “Well, of course you did. That’s the only reaction that even makes sense after all of that.” Good hustle, everybody. Even with that major downer ending.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #038 — I completely ignored all of the other Black Vortex tie-ins and just went in to this cold as a regular reader of nothing but this title, and let me tell you, that recap page made for some entertaining reading. Glad to have Sorrentino still in the mix with Bendis here, this is singular artistic work. Given the cliffhanger, I’m a little bit tempted to jump on board with all of the other tie-ins, but I think it will be just as much fun to let everybody run around and keep fucking shit up for another little while, and I’ll just check back in next month.

S.H.I.E.L.D. #003 — I’m still issue-by-issue with this, but if you pass up a book with Davis/Farmer/Wilson on interiors, you’re just a damn fool, never even mind that you were even considering giving Waid a miss in the first place. No surprise, Spidey is Coulson’s best wingman yet, and this romp through Stephen Strange’s Village manse is great fun from the get-go. Between the art, setting, and characterization, there’s a kind of timeless quality to these pages. The coloring obviously brands it as modern, but if these were newsprint pages with nothing but flats, this could easily be a product of the eighties or late seventies, even. Given the subject matter, it feels the least bit odd to say, but yeah, again, this one’s just nothing but good fun.

DAREDEVIL #013 — More quality from the Waid/Samnee/Wilson machine. That’s one hell of a cover. A diverting done-in-one conflict with a twist that was not difficult to anticipate but Kirsten pumping her fist at getting her own arch-enemy was charming and worth the cover price all on its own. Also, the Page Six and Twenty splashes in this issue were particularly good, though I’m not sure anything tops that first page. Beautiful rendering, Kirby panel layout, nothing can go wrong.

FANTASTIC FOUR #543 — The around-the-world hijinx keep raining down, it’s basically all hands on deck even if they might be off-panel, and our first family is finally gloriously reunited now that Reed’s got his pluck back. Kirk/Kesel/Aburtov continue to throw down complete A-list game, capturing basically everybody in the Marvel Universe who isn’t an X-Man (or I guess we have to count the Guardians now, too, suddenly). I mean, Alpha Flight gets a shot in the montage before we head over to Rick “Sleepwalker” Sheridan to save the day, leading up to the Heroes Reborn Avengers assembling, with that A still missing from Cap’s head, even, no doubt infuriating true patriots from coast to coast. Bentley-23 and his daddy steal the show in terms of emotional content this time out, though; this was a relationship that Hickman set into play but didn’t have time to pay off before concluding his run, but Robinson does very nice work with them here. I’m all strapped in and ready for two more issues of Clobberin’ Time.

DARTH VADER #002 — Oh dear, someone misspelled Kieron Gillen’s name in the opening crawl credits. He probably doesn’t mind that much. The dynamic between Vader and Tagge is an interesting one and solid casting on Gillen’s part. I really dig the Death Star being called Tarkin’s Folly after the fact, not sure if that’s a new thing, but I’ve never heard it before. [Sidenote: does Darth Vader benefit more than any other character in comic book form from another media? Meaning, when I’ve got James Earl Jones delivering these lines in my head, is there any other character who gets more of a bump from a non-comic-book source? Hearing Kevin Conroy deliver Batman’s lines might be the only thing that comes close.] Oh man, though, Grand General Tagge, do not cast yourself as the wielder of Vader as lightsaber in your metaphor. That line immediately cuts Tagge’s life expectancy to whatever issue ends this arc, #4, #5, whenever. Remember when trades used to always be six issues long, for the most part? Oh, Marvel. Funny how even the Rebel station has that vertical ring around it when it blows up. Maybe that should just be a Death Star thing, kind of a special deal? I found this one a little bit more compelling than last issue. Vader certainly makes one hell of a protagonist. It’s kind of fun to root against those Rebel scum.

SPIDER-GWEN #001 — A pretty solid first issue after the glorious perfection of her debut a few months ago. Hard times have naturally already fallen upon Gwen and The Mary Janes (and pretty much every other secret identity analogue, what an ignominious fate for the ever-lovin’ Ben Grimm; though it is somehow gratifying to see old Frank Castle still punishing). Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi provide more dynamic interiors, dialing up the Ditko while still evoking enough Pope to keep the kinetic energy flowing. Jason Latour hits the right beats. The Heisen-bird pun took me out of it, but then the Marlo quote with all the graffiti won me back over (especially that “turrble comics” one). And then the ANCHORMAN quote. I don’t know, I can see the argument that in this information-saturated society, any plugged-in teenager is going to be thinking in pop-culture quotes. That’s inherently logical, but the effect is that they take me out of the story and reduce my role as a reader from being actively engaged in what’s happening on-panel to instead just playing spot-the-reference. Maybe I’ll get the hang of the rhythm. Overall, this was a terrific first outing. It really almost suffers from that sophomore slump of most #2s after their first issue left us breathless and jaw-dropped. It didn’t quiiiiiite capture the magic lightning in a bottle just the same that second time, but that might not even be possible. I’m certainly glad and grateful that this book exists and wish it a long life.